SPOILER
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jbaddock — 11 years ago(October 18, 2014 08:58 AM)
It is a disturbing scene, undoubtedly, but it's there to emphasise the difference between the alien and humans. The responses of the adult humans were purely driven by emotions - you can argue that the woman was stupid to try and rescue her dog, and that the husband was equally stupid to go in after his wife, but how would you have felt if they hadn't? Most pet owners would risk their lives to save their pet, not to mention the husband trying to save his wife, but what was the alien doing? Simply observing the scene waiting to see if her prey would return to the shore so she could whack him on the head and drag him away. The human drama being acted out in front of her was of absolutely no interest to her whatsoever. Likewise, neither she nor her handler(?) was at all interested in the baby.
However, IIRC, while listening to the radio in the van, she seems to hear a distorted version of the baby crying (as if she's playing it back in some way) and the thought occurred to me that maybe this was the first sign of her beginning to acquire emotions. -
olip74 — 11 years ago(January 19, 2015 02:53 AM)
Definitely the start of her discovering emotions, she is completely impassive up to this point. However what happens is she thinks she hears the baby and starts (as if recalling the baby on the beach?), she looks about and sees that the noise is coming from a crying child in a car seat in the car next to her (hence the muffled/distorted sound).
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ljam — 11 years ago(January 19, 2015 11:58 PM)
The aliens are ruthless and uncaring (they are like Pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers), so she doesn't (initially) care about the baby. She develops a limited form of humanity (however she can't eat human food)and emotions (she goes back to try to find the baby).
Along her journey to her "humanity" she encounters victims, good people, indifferent people, and human monsters.
The other aliens - the motorbike riders - are still alien.
At the end I think she realizes she can't become human. -
always_keep_fighting — 11 years ago(December 05, 2014 02:38 AM)
I have to say that I have two dogs that I love dearly. But I would NEVER EVER leave my baby on the beach, even with her father, to go try to save one of my dogs that had gone into a very turbulent sea. It was obvious that there was a very strong undertow, and her chances of getting that dog back were slim.
Then the HUSBAND leaves the baby and goes after the wife, who is caught in the undertow??? It I were the wife, and survived that rescue attempt, and knew that my husband had left our child unattended on the beach, I would beat him with the same rock SJ used on the other guy. JMHO
My husband and I both thought that that scene was hard to watch. I can't imagine being a parent and leaving my baby sitting on a rocky beach, crying her/his little heart out, just to be in a movie. Even if I were just a few feet away, out of camera sight. Imagine just standing there watching your child cry and not doing anything about it. Immediately. Not for me.
Since I've learned (from this board) that the alien was harvesting meat from these men, I have to wonder if the baby was a boy, if it would have taken the baby as well. Humans eat babies all the timeveal, lamb, even the chicken that you buy at the grocery store is from "teenage" chickens. I would think that a human baby would be a treat for human-eating aliens.
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When I was a kidno, wait. I still do that. -
nerowolfgal — 10 years ago(March 20, 2016 07:20 PM)
Since I've learned (from this board) that the alien was harvesting meat from these men, I have to wonder if the baby was a boy, if it would have taken the baby as well. Humans eat babies all the timeveal, lamb, even the chicken that you buy at the grocery store is from "teenage" chickens. I would think that a human baby would be a treat for human-eating aliens.
Well, at least in the book, she had been ordered to only harvest muscular males as they provided the most meat. The company she worked for would have no use for a baby of either sex. The meat was only for the very top elite. Again, in the book, there is a paragraph about how a single thin slice would cost the same as oxygen and water for a poor family on her planet for a week.
Also, in the book, it is hidden from her population except for the top people of the company that harvest the meat, that it is from a sentient species. Her slow shedding of indoctrination that humans weren't really sentient is also part of what drives her despair and rebellion. -
codyhoskins — 11 years ago(January 18, 2015 11:52 PM)
It's an uncomfortable scene to watch and reminds us of how futile it is when humans act on emotion and instinct in a very risky situation. That husband should have stayed on the shore when the man rescued him because he had a beep baby on the beach with no one else to look after him and was going to be easily drowned by those waves because the wife was already pulled beneath the waves by the time he was pulled onto shore. He should have thought about the baby but still wanted to save the wife no matter how impossible it was and that did no good at all, just made an orphan out of the kid. It shows just how frail and broken we really are, in comparison to the alien who has no emotion or flaws to worry about because she's just there to do what she's been sent for and doesn't have to care about anybody or risk herself for anybody. In that way, it makes an alien or robot appear as a better survivor when they don't have to get mixed in the same emotions and fatal flaws that drive humans down destructive paths, but that proves harder for the alien to handle as she becomes lost in her mission and tries to be human to the point where she can't be anything.
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jcjohnston1-1 — 11 years ago(January 23, 2015 02:22 AM)
This has been talked to death but I have insomnia
I found it disturbing, but the message seemed to be that the aliens had no empathy toward humans, not even a baby. We are cattle to them, which I think gives the female's "journey of self-discovery" more weight.
Did the movie go too far? I don't think so. We needed to understand how little regard the aliens had for humans and I can't imagine a better way to demonstrate it. I didn't enjoy the scene at all, but that was probably the point.
I was more troubled by the shear horror on the face of the child used in the crypt scene in Dracula (1992). According to the movie's trivia notes the girl really
was
terrified of actress Sadie frost in her make-up. In contrast to the baby, who will never recall getting upset that his mom made him sit and cry for 30 seconds, this girl was old enough to have a lot of nightmares from filming the scene. -
oneloveall — 11 years ago(January 23, 2015 06:16 PM)
I'm not one to complain about the various abuse and exploitation so often generating controversy on these boards, but for even one minute, that baby was literally terrified for its life in the dark, and to say it was necessary to justify alien apathy by getting such a deeply registered sense of pure abandonment from such a young child is a testament to much of the film's shallow nature and emotional detachment.
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theemaster — 10 years ago(September 27, 2015 03:19 AM)
The baby was angry, not terrified. This was a child who wanted to be fed, picked up, changed, etc, and was being ignored by cast, crew, and parents. For about 60 seconds.
The range
of that baby was
amazing
!
We are animals too, you know
Actually,
were
not.. but we do have DNA that evolved from the natural life form on this planet.. but also we do have quite a lot of alien dna.. which is why we don't look like bigfoot.. the naturally evolved species of earth. -
Franco_Zed — 10 years ago(September 28, 2015 02:08 AM)
We don't even see anything happen to the baby. All we see is its vulnerability, and yet we are all upset about it. That is extremely effective film-making and totally fair game for this kind of film, IMO. If you find it upsetting to see a helpless abandoned baby, then that simply shows that you are a good, caring person.
We could imagine that some nice person found the baby and took it home and then turned it in to the authorities. The radio report didn't have that info yet.
Every single person on the face of the Earth is unique.
except for you. -
HalBanksy — 10 years ago(October 01, 2015 05:09 PM)
Truly an unsettling moment.
That scene was like torture and very hard to watch. I imagine a lot of people would have stopped the film at that point. A quite
sadistic
decision by the director to drag the viewer back to the beach at night and see the child still completely vulnerable. It was really pushing boundaries of taste at that point - a baby cannot act and the distress just seemed too real. I literally had to remind myself I was just watching a film. Incredibly effective cinema to control the viewers emotions like that. Amazingly sinister film. I only wish the level of intensity had remained so high. The third quarter was flat after such a brilliant build up. -
svenrufus — 10 years ago(October 01, 2015 05:18 PM)
The third quarter is crucial, and brilliantly handled. That transition from her inhumanity to starting to care for people, before being faced (for the first time?) with the inhumanity of the people she had only just started to understand Utterly brilliant. It's a film that switched us about and it's hard to hold on sometimes but it's really rewarding for seeing it as a journey of sorts, and getting to that destination.
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HalBanksy — 10 years ago(October 01, 2015 06:02 PM)
A very divisive film. (Always a good thing!) I found the majority of it absolutely stunning - Impossible to look away from. I suppose I must agree that the slowing of intensity was needed for character development.
Truly there was only a single moment in the film I didn't like.
When she sheds her skin at the end. She is holding her 'face' and it appeared to blink back at her.
The previous cinematography had been so impressive - this moment seemed quite cheap in comparison. I also didn't get the logic behind it.
Is the skin still alive? -
svenrufus — 10 years ago(October 01, 2015 10:49 PM)
Actually, funny you should say that about the face blinking - I didn't notice that before, and watching it again last night, I was quite taken aback. It does jar, and it does raise questions that I hadn't considered before, and I'm not sure what to do with that.
Certainly is divisive - some of the comments on twitter last night were, well, kind of what you'd expect. My favourite was one who summarised the overall views like this. "49% loved it, 49% hated it, and 2% hated it but watched it for Scarlet Johansen's boobs". Probably quite accurate, although I suspect the 2% might really be a larger number. -
HenryCW — 10 years ago(October 01, 2015 11:26 PM)
I am quite certain that the 2% was a very serious underestimate of the true percentage.
Going back to the scene, I think its main purpose was to show that at that point in the film, Scarlett's alien was still focused on her job of collecting humans. She hit the unconscious man with a rock, and did not care that the baby was about to be drowned. Her empathy with humans was to come later in the film. -
LeCadavreExquis — 10 years ago(March 26, 2016 02:25 AM)
I saw the movie yesterday and that scene made me want to stop watching the film. I didn't but it keeps popping back in my mind. I can understand that people are troubled by it, and channel the complexity of that disturbed feeling into the simplicity of anger, hell I'm troubled by it too.
It reminded me of the picture of the little (Syrian?) boy washed up on the Greek shore. It makes real and tangible how fragile we are and helpless.
Think of the violence we inflict upon the other and on species we view as inferior. Then: enter a species that views us as the other and as inferior. The scene might have been the turning point for the alien. Seeing the woman foolishly trying to save the dog; the man trying to save the woman, etc. A cynic might say that altruism is the impulsive response when our emotions overwhelm our ability to think rationally.
Forgive me my unstructured ramblings; I haven't thought this film through yet.
Someone remarked earlier on that the responses in this thread showed who had children or not. I have a one year old daughter and this film made me want to hold her and cuddle her. I hate that scene and I think it is great for making me feel that way.
Ghosts and lovers, they will haunt you for a while